Stave Quotes & Sayings

The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. — Ayn Rand

Don't be closer to twice a friend's weight than to her actual weight, I told myself. This little mantra has helped me stave off obesity for more than two decades. — Mindy Kaling

You have each other, thought Isabel.But was that enough? Even when one was in love, it was not really enough just to have the other person - not if one needed stimulation. The company of just one person could be reassuring, could stave off loneliness, but would it be enough for three months? — Alexander McCall Smith

In order to stave off covetouness, greed, and spite, citizens world over must be educated. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Hour of Stars (1920) The round silence of night, one note on the stave of the infinite. Ripe with lost poems, I step naked into the street. The blackness riddled by the singing of crickets: sound, that dead will-o'-the-wisp, that musical light perceived by the spirit. A thousand butterfly skeletons sleep within my walls. A wild crowd of young breezes over the river. — Federico Garcia Lorca

You believe what you must in order to stave off the conviction that it's all a tale told by an idiot — Peter De Vries

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns. — Henry David Thoreau

The round silence of night,
one note on the stave
of the infinite.

Ripe with lost poems,
I step naked into the street.
The blackness riddled
by the singing of crickets:
sound,
that dead
will-o'-the-wisp,
that musical light
perceived
by the spirit.

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

- Hour of Stars (1920) — Federico Garcia Lorca

Will we go home to Beacon? Melanie had asked. When we're grown up? And Miss Justineau looked so sad, so stricken, that Melanie had immediately started to blurt out apologies and assurances, trying to stave off the effects of whatever terrible thing she'd inadvertently said. Which she understands now. From this angle, it's obvious. What she'd said, about going home to Beacon, was impossible, like hot snow or dark sunshine. Beacon was never home to her, and never could be. That — M.R. Carey

There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine. — Peter Singer

Waking up was sheer delight for him: he always showed a naive and simple amazement at the discovery that he was back on earth; he was sincerely pleased. She, on the other hand, awoke with great reluctance, with a desire to stave off the day by keeping her eyes closed. — Milan Kundera

It was her grandfather who'd told her the tale of this particular violin, over and over, as if the telling could stave off loss, as if the weight and scope of human history were not found in books or in those mythic universities in Rome and Naples that no one in their village had ever seen but, rather, were encoded in objects like this one, a violin touched by hundreds of hands, loved, used, stroked, pressed, made to outlive its owners, storing their secrets and lies — Carolina De Robertis

I can't stave off the hurt that seeps into my voice. "Why can't you be happy for me? — Emma Chase

He was getting so skinny, he had to cut new holes in his belt. But he would sell himself in the pleasure houses of West Stave before he'd ask for his father's mercy. — Leigh Bardugo

Maple. Maypole
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.
Woolen. Woman.
Moon at night.
Willow. Window.
Candlelight.
Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.
Barrel. Barley.
Stone and stave.
Wind and water.
Misbehave. — Patrick Rothfuss

He talked and talked, the kind of talking you do to stave off the inevitable physical desire, the kind of talking that only increases it. — Zadie Smith

My love of maple syrup. I've been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it's gone. It's a habit I have to stave off. I don't want to lose all my teeth. — Rufus Wainwright

To stave off the panic associated with the absence of a primary object, borderline patients frequently will impulsively engage in behaviors that numb the panic and establish contact with and control over some new object. — Christine Ann Lawson

Kaz rapped his cane on the stone floor. He was standing in the doorway to the tomb. "If everyone is done cuddling, we have a job to do."
"Hold up," said Jesper, arm still slung around Inej. "We're not talking about the job until we figure out what those things were on the Stave."
"What things?" asked Inej.
"Did you miss half the Stave blowing up?"
"We saw the bomb at the White Rose go off," said Inej, "and then we heard another explosion."
"At the Anvil," said Nina.
"After that," Inej said, "we ran."
Jesper nodded sagely. "That was your big mistake. If you'd stuck around, you could have nearly been killed by a Shu guy with wings. — Leigh Bardugo

I think there's little things you can do with a dermatologist that can stave off major, giant surgery, which is really scary. But I'm all for, if something's bothering you, fix it. At least talk to somebody to see what it would take to fix it, and see if that's for you or not. — Christie Brinkley

They forked up in the air for him, like trees branching in the night, and rained down sparks. They roared and whispered with their crackling voices, they had danced when he said the word. The flames here were both tame and mutinous, strange, silent beasts that sometimes bit the hand that fed them. Only occasionally, on cold nights when there was nothing but the flames to stave off his loneliness, did he think he heard them calling to him, but they whispered words he didn't understand. — Cornelia Funke

Death wasn't something to romanticize. It was something to stave off, to avoid, to fight as long as possible. Even though she had her battles with melancholy, she never seriously considered suicide. Something in her trusted that there would be an upswing and it would be worth waiting for. — Meredith Marple

Part of the joy and pleasure of English is its boundless creativity: I can describe a new machine as bicyclish, I can say that I'm vitamining myself to stave off a cold, I can complain that someone is the smilingest person I've ever seen, and I can decide, out of the blue, that 'fetch' is now the word I want to use to mean 'cool.' — Erin McKean

How far can a person hear?
Malorie needs the children to hear into the trees, into the wind, into the dirt banks that lead to an entire world of living creatures. The river is an amphitheater, Malorie muses, paddling.
But it's also a grave.
The children must listen.
Malorie cannot stave off the visions of hands emerging from the darkness, clutching the heads of the children, deliberately untying that which protects them.
Breathing hard and sweating, Malorie prays a person can hear all the way to safety. — Josh Malerman

But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life. — Jared Diamond

He knew that the very memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the elements of music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard (still almost entirely unknown) on which, here and there only, separated by the thick darkness of its unexplored tracts, some few among the millions of keys of tenderness, of passion, of courage, of serenity, which compose it, each one differing from all the rest as one universe differs from another, have been discovered by a few great artists who do us the service, when they awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme they have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that vast, unfathomed and forbidding night of our soul which we take to be an impenetrable void. — Marcel Proust

How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly? — Salman Rushdie

...it is crucial to realize that an once of student affairs administration prevention can stave off a pound of lawyers. — Peter F. Lake

So the only way I could stave off any of these assaults was to become a gang banger, and to excel, so I could quell the behavior. If I excelled, then I could call the shots. So I became a community leader from inside. — Malik Yusef

The physician's duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence. — Paul Kalanithi

I attempted various types of plastic surgery, minutely but enough to stave off this encroaching middle-aged body. And every time I did, something went wrong. I felt misshapen, just not natural any more. — Jamie Lee Curtis

What does that mean?" Matthias asked. "Goedmedbridge?"
"Good maiden bridge."
"Why is it called that?"
Nina leaned against the doorway and said, "Well, the story is that when a woman found out her husband had fallen in love with a girl from West Stave and planned to leave her, she came to the bridge and, rather than live without him, hurled herself into the canal."
"Over a man with so little honor?"
"You'd never be tempted? All the fruits and flesh of West Stave before you?"
"Would you throw yourself off a bridge for a man who was?"
"I wouldn't throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka. — Leigh Bardugo

You never hear widows voice the sentiment, but I could stave off companionship indefinitely. Sex, not so much. — Abby Fabiaschi

The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people. — Ray Bradbury

My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed. — Samantha Power

The final match-up of the round was by far the most satisfying for Rezkin. It was against the mace wielding Sandman who had murdered the young stave-master. The beast had already attempted to end the life of another competitor that morning. Dark Tidings did not even give the man a chance to put on a show. As soon as the announcer finished speaking, he drew the black blade, strode forward with purpose and disarmed the man, literally. After losing both appendages, the brute fell to his knees in shock. While the healers were running to treat the man before he bled out, Dark Tidings stood over the Sandman and said, 'Bracken Freedon of the Isle of Sand. You have been judged and found guilty. Bring nigh to thee, King's Dark Tidings.' The black blade came down in one fell swoop and took the man's head clean from his body. Green lighting crackled within the black swords length... — Kel Kade

A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one's mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods. — Mason Currey

Mario Draghi became the first major central banker to cut a key interest rate below zero as he unveiled a series of radical measures to stave off a crippling bout of deflation, and signalled his willingness to take further action. — Anonymous

Bad things are gonna' happen to you, because they happen to us all. And worrying won't stave the really bad things off. Don't make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to other people's blow-dried outsides. Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human. — Mary Karr

However, Hardy's relationship with nature is a dialectical one. While he indicates that he recognizes how human perception shapes nature, he nevertheless accepts nature as possessed of its own agency, as working through its cycle regardless of human perception, understanding, or attempted control. In essence, it claims a power apart from that with which humans may have imbued it. Even when humanity has lost faith in the possibility of renewal through nature, nature as Hardy describes it fights back, attempting to force human consciousness to acknowledge her power, her ability to transform life. — Shirley A. Stave

A fortress with an arsenal of weapons designed to stave off hungry, — Anonymous

Until she walked into my life I was simply a violin of rusted notes. In one night she rearranged the mess inside me, exposing the symphony was there all along it just needed a conductor to make my pulse compose to the harmonies of her celestial touch. Those notes are strung up neatly now, the five lines of the stave crammed with adulation, filling sheets, unleashing a sonata of adoration, drumming my heart and strumming my veins. — Poppet

The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That's what the whole thing is about. And we can't stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I'm not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not. — Nick Hornby

What I learned is that acting is to a large extent about trying to stave off self-doubt long enough to be natural and real onstage. — Daniel Radcliffe

Remember our friend Mark?" Wylan winced. Let's say the mark is a tourist walking through the Barrel. He's heard it's a good place to get rolled, so he keeps patting his wallet, making sure it's there, congratulating himself on just how alert and cautious he;s being. No fool he. Of course every thime he pats his back pocket or the front of his coat, what is he doing? He's telliing every thief on the Stave exactly where he keeps his scrub."
"Saints," grumbled Nina. "I've probably done that."
"Everyone does," said Inej.
Jesper lifted a brow. "Not everyone."
"That's only because you never have anything in your wallet," Nina shot back.
"Mean."
"Factual."
"Facts are for the unimaginative," Jesper said with a dismissive wave. — Leigh Bardugo

Now, just think, to accuse me of such a crime. Think of it! I, who have for twenty-five years single- handed struggled against the invasion of the Russian Government into American money markets, and to this day stave them off. Think of it! Who, as I, have been foremost in the past for agitation and insisted to the President of the United States; as some of you must know, that our treaty with Russia must be abrogated. — Jacob Schiff

Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline - it works. — Dan Buettner

In university, in a vain attempt to stave off the frosh fifteen, I used to melt fat-free cheese over broccoli, onions and cauliflower in the cafeteria microwave. That earned me few friends. — Rachel Sklar

He loved her so much he felt his bones would break. Loving her was like lying in a bed of nettles, and the feel of her skin against his was the only balm, the only time the stinging stopped, while, for her, he was the warm bath she took to stave off the cold waterfall of Boaty's indifference. — Robert Goolrick

As an artist, there's a sweet, jump-starting quality to [marijuana] for me. I've often felt telepathic and receptive to inexplicable messages my whole life. I can stave those off when I'm not high. When I'm high - well, they come in and there's less of a veil, so to speak. So if ever I need some clarity, or a quantum leap in my own consciousness, or a quantum leap in terms of writing something or getting an answer, it's a quick way for me to get it. — Alanis Morissette

You are wrong. If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I've seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me. — Chris Avellone

No one knew exactly why the seals ate stones, but maybe, some thought, it was for ballast. Or to help digestion. Or to stave off hunger. Or, as Brown had written in the journal, 'maybe they're just weird. — Susan Casey

The Empire was quickly becoming the other, a featureless grey enemy that species of varied sorts would be able to stave off only if they united, all differences set aside. It was almost heartening to witness the dawn of hope, as cautious and fragile as it was. — James Luceno

So ... you like her, Gabe?' Lauren pressed.
'Yes,' he answered, starting work on his spreadsheet again in an effort to stave off more questions.
'She's great, isn't she?'
Shit. A smile tugged at his mouth and Lauren was standing right next to him. No question she could see it. He tried to cover himself by changing the subject. — Victoria Dahl

Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He
went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was needed. He
took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. And if He rejected mystery, He would have been rejecting faith. — Colum McCann

The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics). — Robert Anton Wilson

In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot. — Melville Herman

Mother was a falconer. The one who stood on the hills and watched, trying to stave off whatever ill she perceived was coming to her children. She owned copies of our minds in the pockets of her own mind and so could easily sniff troubles early in their forming, the same way sailors discern the forming foetus of a coming storm. — Chigozie Obioma

When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. — David Sedaris

To hell with revenge, to hell with his schemes. If Rollins had done something to Inej, Kaz would paint East Stave with his entrails. — Leigh Bardugo

Well, the story is that when a woman found out her husband had fallen in love with a girl from West Stave and planned to leave her, she came to the bridge and, rather than live without him, hurled herself into the canal." "Over a man with so little honor?" "You'd never be tempted? All the fruits and flesh of West Stave before you?" "Would you throw yourself off a bridge for a man who was?" "I wouldn't throw myself off a bridge for the king of Ravka." "It's a terrible story," said Matthias. "I doubt it's true. It's just what happens when you let men name the bridges. — Leigh Bardugo

I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer's block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer's block. I think writer's block is God's way of telling you one of two things - that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends. — Terry Brooks

What is superstition , but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb. — Fritz Leiber

In the end, I did whatever I could to stave off her nightmares. — Roshani Chokshi

ERANNA TO SAPPHO
O You wild adept at throwing!
Like a spear by other things, I'd lain
there beside my next of kin. Your strain
flung me far. To where's beyond my knowing.
None can bring me back again.
Sisters think upon me as they twine,
and the house is full of warm relation.
I alone am out of the design,
and I tremble like a supplication;
for the lovely goddess all creation
bowers in legend lives this life of mine.
SAPPHO TO ERANNA
With unrest I want to inundate you,
want to brandish you, you vine-wreathed stave.
Want, like death itself, to penetrate you
and to pass you onwards like the grave
to the All: to all these things that wait you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

No one wants to occupy a black hole of sadness and despair or slip on the tight rope that separates sanity from insanity, and reside in a vortex devoid of reality. I entered the world as a freeman and desire to escape a state of existential vertigo. I yearn to discover a synthesizing spirit of my being and hold my head high, free of doubt, and devoid of fear. I wish to foment the cerebral energy to stave off premature destruction and forevermore blunt an intolerable state of anguish. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In the life cycle of a theory, it starts off simple and then gets fancier and fancier, as brainy thinkers mount objections and the theory's proponents develop more subtle, complex, and well-defended theory to stave them off. Then it dies. Actually, before it dies, it lives in a special preserve for theories too complicated to survive in the wild, called a university. — Eric Kaplan

Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for. — Irvine Welsh

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined to be severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed are altogether honest, very likely. They conceal something; they exaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the reals state of affairs; say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless; keep a smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy
are ready to lay hold of any pretext for delay, or of any money, so as to stave off the inevitable ruin a few days longer. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Washington continues to encourage ever more ill-considered lending in a misguided attempt to stave off needed market corrections. The currently proposed combination of a nationwide infrastructure spending orgy plus tax-cut bribes does nothing to remedy that. — Michelle Malkin

The gray-haired growser, who proved to be a lawyer, had made it clear how much he loathed the people who were, in his view, attempting to undermine the American Constitution by imposing a state religion - or possibly it was "religion state by state," for his argument grew more confused with each Martini he sank. At any rate he was noisily predicting that the result would be world domination by the Communist bloc because they would wind up with a monopoly of practical science while his own people would be reduced to praying, sticking pins in chance-opened Bibles, and casting lots to decide whose eldest son should be sacrificed to stave off disaster. — John Brunner

Memphis cupped her cheek in his hand and put his mouth on hers. Theta had never been kissed the way Memphis was kissing her now. There had been fumbling boys thrumming with nervous want. There had been theater owners, older "uncles" who pawed at her when she walked past or who wanted to "inspect" her costume to make sure it was decent down to the undergarments, men she granted the occasional kiss in order to stave off something worse. And there was Roy, of course. Beautiful, cruel Roy, whose kisses were declaratory, as if he needed to conquer Theta, to brand her with his mouth. Those men had never really seen Theta. But Memphis's kiss was nothing like theirs. It was passionate, yet tender. A mutual agreement of desire. It was a kiss shared. He was kissing her. He was with her. — Libba Bray

Yes, there is death in this business of whaling - a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot. CHAPTER — Herman Melville

As they sped across the bridge, Jesper thought he spotted Matthias and Wylan in their red capes, tossing coins as they steadily made their way off the Stave. If they started running, it might draw stadwatch attention. Jesper struggled not to laugh. That was definitely Matthias and Wylan. Matthias was hurling the money with way too much force and Wylan with way too much enthusiasm. The kid's throwing arm needed serious work. He looked like he was actively trying to dislocate his shoulder. — Leigh Bardugo

But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to stave them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. — Oscar Wilde

We kiss to say hello, to stave off silences, to show how much we've missed someone, to show we're glad to be with them. We kiss to stop arguments or to interrupt a conversation we no longer want to have. We also use kisses when we want to pretend that everything is all right. I've been doing a lot of that lately. But it turns out that some things just can't be kissed better. — Ali Harris

Until we can insert a USB into our ear and download our thoughts, drawing remains the best way of getting visual information on to the page. I draw as a collagist, juxtaposing images and styles of mark-making from many sources. The world I draw is the interior landscape of my personal obsessions and of cultures I have absorbed and adapted, from Latvian folk art to Japanese screens. I lasso thoughts with a pen. I draw a stave church or someone from Hello! Magazine not because I want to replicate how they look, but because of the meaning they bring to the work. — Grayson Perry

It's certainly nice to have my options open." He looked back out at the city. "Can this possibly work, Mister Brekker? Or am I risking the fate of Ravka and the world's Grisha on the honor and abilities of a fast-talking urchin?"
"More than a bit of both," said Kaz. "You're risking a country. We're risking our lives. Seems a fair trade."
The king of Ravka offered his hand. "The deal is the deal?"
"The deal is the deal."
They shook.
"If only treaties could be signed so quickly," he said, his easy privateer's mien sliding back in place like a mask purchased on West Stave. "I'm going to have a drink and a bath. One can take only so much mud and squalor. As the rebel said to the prince, it's bad for the constitution."
He flicked an invisible speck of dust from his lapel and sauntered out of the solarium. — Leigh Bardugo

By concentrating on what I was grateful for, I was able to stave off despair. — Amanda Lindhout

I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. You with the unpaid bill, Despair, You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, I will pay you in the grave, Death will listen to your stave. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

well. It was as if he himself were embodied afresh in this lad. He could protect this boy as he had not been protected himself. He had the power to stave off the destructive forces that had once torn his own life apart. After all, they were not that different. The ship had said so. To protect him would be like saving himself. — Robin Hobb